One of my very favorite humans and authors–as well as a long-time friend of the show–Seanan McGuire was just announced as the writer of the upcoming X-Men: Gold Annual #2 (cover above). I caught up with Seanan on Discord for an x-clusive chat about her history with the X-Men and what it’s like to write your childhood favorites.

Keep going for the full interview, as well as the cover to X-Men: Gold Annual #2 (WITH BUNNIES)!

In which Excalibur goes 16-bit platformer; Alysande gets new threads; Shadowcat should probably just change her code name to Ripley; Captain Britain may or may not destroy the universe; Doctor Doom tries his hand at human resources; Excalibur is at home with weirdness; and no lizard needs breasts.

X-PLAINED:

Invisible Boy

Human heralds of Galactus

Excalibur Special Editions

Excalibur: Air Apparent

Excalibur: XX Crossing

Dr. Jonothon Cayre

Norm the LMD

Lava pits of Scotland

Some dubious herpetology

Eric the Cyborg (Coldblood-7)

Robert Cop

Special Man

Air-Walker and/or Gabriel Lam

A cosmic explosion

Captain Britain’s extra costume

Sidestep

An exceptionally awkward job interview

A counterintuitive plan

The other time-displaced X-Men

The best version of Angel

Angel’s third-greatest nemesis

Gladiator Hank

A very fancy vest

The best Excalibur Special Edition

The Phalanx vs. the Technarchy

Warlock vs. gender

Our thoughts on Avengers: Infinity War

Note: according to the letter column from Excalibur #54, at least some of the art credits for Excalibur: XX Crossing were incorrect, so some of our descriptions of who drew what in this episode are wrong. See the comments below for more information!

In which Wolverine is an eternal teenager; most of what Jay knows about Hawaii comes from Lilo and Stitch; Shiv is a complicated fellow; Nightcrawler represents an unattainable beauty standard; the Easter Bunny flies at dawn; Wolverine: The Jungle Adventure is delightful; Logan inadvertently starts a cult; Gahk does as she pleases; Jay and Miles are going to FlameCon; and we are all now Honkers forever.

In which space bugs break time; you may already be a member of Excalibur; Earth-616 remains somewhat baffled by basic telecommunications technology; you should absolutely not order monkeys from an ad in a comic book; Widget gets a new look; Excalibur gets a new logo; Merlin X-Plains everything; and Rachel gets in touch with her roots.

X-PLAINED:

The Timebroker

Excalibur #48-50

What “fair use” doesn’t mean

Penis bones, revisited

Feron

Prophylactic levitation

Several inaccurate flashbacks

Someone who is neither a Nazi nor Charles Xavier

Necrom (again)

The art of heroic exposition

Monastic population maintenance

Mail-order monkeys

Widget’s new look

Kylun’s mutant power

Several alternate Excaliburs

The True Secret Purpose of Excalibur

The new Excalibur logo

Fighting weird with weird

A whole lot of history

Phoenix vs. Anti-Phoenix

Some very epic thwarting

The end of an era

Alan Davis’s Excalibur

How we work alternate timelines into coverage

Bishop and Deathbird as a couple

NEXT EPISODE: Wolverine: The Jungle Adventure and Bloody Choices!

UPDATE: Apparently the dead mail-order monkeys were apocryphal, although we were able to dig up some fairly nightmarish accounts of live mail-order monkeys. …Yay?

In which Jay may have Stockholm syndrome; Nick Fury is objectively sillier than G. W. Bridge; we get a brief artistic reprieve; Cable’s legal expertise does not extend to trademarks; our favorite Ship returns; Miles’s grandmother calls it like it is; Sauron is bad at taxonomy; and Garrison Kane is basically a very violent Inspector Gadget.